I guess it makes sense to have your own build tool written in the language when you do not want to depend on the JVM (scala-native, for example). Then you don't

I guess it makes sense to have your own build tool written in the language when you do not want to depend on the JVM (scala-native, for example). Then you don't have to hope maven/ant have their own native implementation. As a plus you get to write your own DSL which might be more acceptable by the language user than that of another language or XML. Of course you might also invent a bad DSL; it's no easy task.